Kalguur has stopped me from playing new leagues and private leagues

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

In case the post wasn't clear (lol), I don't believe things should be in the game simply because they pump out loot.

I think things should be in the game when they serve a purpose and are ACTIVELY engaging.

Kalguur is not interesting, its not active, nor does it add anything to the game in terms of actual play. It's just a glorified clock.

And the fact that THIS is what we were left with for almost a year is heartbreaking. Let it be excised and forgotten

Lets also not kid ourselves into thinking that a passive form of loot won't (or already hasn't) affect all other sources of loot. Or value. If given the choice, I would MUCH rather have no passive afk income and better, or at least static active loot and value.

1: I find the mechanic engaging. I fiddle with it constantly.

2: I and others also find it amusing as a diversion from the standard game. That it's a timed event adds a layer of resource management to the game that creates an amusing sub-goal to completing normal content.

3: It does stink that we've been running it for a year. But the way I see it, PoE II need to be good for PoE to have a future. So I'm fine with them getting the sequel in order to preserve the game I preferer for the long haul.

4: The settlers mechanic is churning out about as much as any other PoE league mechanic over a similar timeframe. It pales compared to some of the leagues like Harvest or Necropolis, and it's also more controlled, since your farmers can only harvest so much so quickly. Level 10 farm is level 10, and your city is hardcapped there.

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Sabranic_SilverDeth#2793 wrote:

I fiddle with my town far more than I mess with my atlas, spec or gear. It's simply another layer of complexity and depth to the game.

you lost me......there is nothing to "fiddle with" lol.

Complexity and depth, are you serious? There is NO depth. NO complexity. You either have gold and ore or you don't. Everything else is automated. It is quite literally the OPPOSITE of complex and deep, even when incorporated into the overall gameplay loop. It is passive income. Doesn't get LESS deep than that.

I mean....maybe you LIKE idle games?


And you ignored the part about being "active" (except to say that somehow you are VERY active with a mechanic that is mostly automatic): that is what separates a straight up "time" cost from other forms of "time" being spent in a game. YES I play an action rpg to kill things, get loot, and create a character. I do NOT play an action rpg to....wait for resources for a week, send a shipment, and wait 45 minutes for a screen of loot.

There is a world of difference between literally being told to wait 45 minutes, and playing a game for 45 minutes. Even though both "technically" take 45 minutes of your time.

If it was as "passive" as you think it is then I wouldn't get so annoyed\burnt out on having to earn gold to get said passive income. It's not "passive" its basically just a more advanced form of incubator where the work gets drawn out and complicated to simulate earning bigger rewards when its basically just reduced what you would have gotten several leagues back and moved them behind a "new" mechanic.


However, what makes it more engaging is the simple fact its a mechanic that goes beyond kill shit and loot explosion. Now while the gold helps to make maps that drop little of use "feel" more productive, the sheer amount of gold sinks on top of having continuous costs to utilize the services eventually wears out its welcome as I'm pretty sure even people who have maxed their towns or gotten their 36+ lost interest some time ago.

What I'm dreading is how the rewards are bound to get reduced moving forward should it go core given I couldn't even be motivated to earn the several hundred thousand gold more to max out everything.

In simple terms, I liked the concept of introducing a player's "own" town and gold but a fresh economy isn't enough incentive for me to redo said town. But to be fair, I basically haven't been motivated since before maven and co got introduced anyway.

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SeCKSEgai#6175 wrote:

If it was as "passive" as you think it is then I wouldn't get so annoyed\burnt out on having to earn gold to get said passive income.

this is EXACTLY the nature of passive income in idle gaming. You are burnt out because it doesn't feel like loot, yet it still takes a huge amount of time. It's infuriating to collect and farm, rather than FUN. Doesn't make it any less passive. In fact, passive income gets me far more angry than any other form of loot or income in gaming BECAUSE of how un-engaging it is at every step. Hence....my hatred for all things Kalguur

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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SeCKSEgai#6175 wrote:

If it was as "passive" as you think it is then I wouldn't get so annoyed\burnt out on having to earn gold to get said passive income.

this is EXACTLY the nature of passive income in idle gaming. You are burnt out because it doesn't feel like loot, yet it still takes a huge amount of time. It's infuriating to collect and farm, rather than FUN. Doesn't make it any less passive. In fact, passive income gets me far more angry than any other form of loot or income in gaming BECAUSE of how un-engaging it is at every step. Hence....my hatred for all things Kalguur

That's not why I feel burnt out - It's gotten progressively harder to complete atlas and voidstones along with other end game content like simulacrums, breachstones, uber elder, etc. I've maxed out several aspects of the town, but I still need a ton of gold to finish. When I didn't want to see them, pirates would ruin my shipments, but now that I can reliably defeat the encounter I haven't been able to trigger it for much needed gold.

My level 96 is using skills that were nerfed some time ago, but endgame still got harder. The current atlas sucks in the sense as you simply get fewer drops as it seems every mechanic has had their rewards reduced in order to make the current new mechanic shine. Build creativity is hardly a thing given the requirements to finish bosses like Maven or t17s.

I really think archnemesis and the desire to make rares more threatening marked the beginning of the end. Sure its been toned down since then but it doesn't make sense to me that random rares are typically far more a threat than the unique map bosses. I especially don't like how they can turn what should be relatively safe maps into unexpected death traps.


As for the passive - I don't consider kalguur a passive thing because of all the micro required - and the fact that you have to play to earn the gold in order for town to function. Passive to me is something like raid:shadow legends where regardless of the player actions you can still collect "loot".

^I almost completely disagree with everything you said above (to me its even the exact opposite of what you wrote in many cases)...but that's besides the "kalguur" discussion.

I don't understand why people keep saying Kalguur has so much "micro". There is basically NO micro involved. You set it and forget it. And its even more true when the town is finished which you can reliably do (for all useful purposes) well before "endgame".

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

^I almost completely disagree with everything you said above (to me its even the exact opposite of what you wrote in many cases)...but that's besides the "kalguur" discussion.

I don't understand why people keep saying Kalguur has so much "micro". There is basically NO micro involved. You set it and forget it. And its even more true when the town is finished which you can reliably do (for all useful purposes) well before "endgame".

It's probably more semantics, but I'm also coming at it with a perspective starting from abyss league.

Examples of micro in other league mechanics:

Beastiary - Reducing health to specific threshold then using consumable net (since removed)
Incursion - temple planning and door access
Synthesis - the puzzle pieces and pathing (never made core)
Harvest - managing crafts (now removed and uses currency)
Blight - Towers and upgrades while avoiding getting overwhelmed in real time
Expedition - currency mgmt, currency usage between 4 aspects, logbooks, deciding explosive path, etc
Ritual - splinters, buy now or layaway, attempt or avoid

Kalguur -

Every feature having a maximum of 11 upgrades with increasing costs

Gold required and consumed in treasury in order for anything in town to function

Having to pick and identify items worth disenchanting (and needing to max just to disenchant uniques which may or may not be worth doing so

Having to pick maps and check potential threats and completion when using map runners

Deciding when higher rank is more important than lower wage

Deciding to upgrade feature or use gold to let town actually run

Deciding what to upgrade and when

Choosing crop layout as needed vs losing the mix bonus

Choosing whether to avoid using certain aspects to reduce hourly cost

Having to keep an eye on treasury gold levels

Deciding between using gold for recombinator or other town use

Deciding to save\pay ransom\lose shipment and workers

Still having to do everything else you would in a previous league on top of that

etc

kingsmarch is both boring and broken at the same time

the gold idea is cool - it somewhat protects currency exchange from bots (somewhat) and it is nice it replaces some white garbage items

the boring part - it is a shallow clicker game with faux complexity. it is pretty much 'on rails' and there are just two big decisions to make: do i map? do i recombinate?

if both are 'no' then you max out sailors and mining (for that ore==gold upgrade) and since then all you do is wait for crops to grow and send shipments

if you want maps and/or recombos you dont send ships and put all your gold to upgrade city asap because mappers, disenchanters and recombs are useless unless maxed. the most frustrating part is getting dust from rare items, it takes forever and even with shipped rares it is horribly inefficient. for me it is the lowest moment of the entire city upgrade path

but, boring is subjective, broken is objective:

- once you set up your city (maxing it out is not even necessary, and you can ignore miners and smelters as the ores late game are useless) all you do is check if your stockpile of wheat and bluewhatever is high enough, ship, collect rewards (i sent them to kalguur in the evening to claim rewards in the morning, just one 3-ship shipment every few days)
it prints money.

- recombos. im glad it is in the game but my take on how to fix it - the multimod trick has to go. just prevent items with crafts from recombinators and you just solved 95% of the entire 'recombos are OP' problem. recombing without this trick is FAR less in your favour past 2 mods

- mappers. expensive but while doing my 200 map challenge i got like 30 fertile catalysts despite nor running ANY ultimatum this league. it prints 'extras' like crazy. true, mappers die to slight breeze (and if i have 3 T10 and 3 T9 i know that is T10 that drops..), true they eat gold but they allow me to get rewards (plenty of them!) from league content i just do not like to run nor invest at that time. and I do not know if thats only me but i got some SERIOUS sick jewelry from mappers (stuff like amethyst, T1 life/aspd/life recoup/chaos res/empty prefix)


in all - the best way of running city is to not run it until maxed, which is boring. running it is also borring.
but the rewards are sick and they feel like cheating at times

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SeCKSEgai#6175 wrote:

I do like what you wrote

Your past examples are GOOD examples of what micro is, VERY different from Kingsmarch: managing maps, managing puzzles, things like OG harvest crop planting, the graveyard, things like that. not everyone liked all of those, but they are examples of ACTIVE micromanaging. Setting up a Betrayal board is a great example. Leveling and gearing the folks in that other town for alternate items. Purposeful planning that actually has an effect on the outcomes of the mechanic. And requires repeated, ACTIVE interaction with killing things, looting, etc. AKA....the game.

Everything you describe about Kalguur are BINARY, non-choices. It's fake micro. The opposite of micro. It's a single choice that doesn't really change any outcomes. Upgrading the town is entirely idle: you wait until you have enough resources, then upgrade. There isn't any "decision" involved. Ultimately, you are going to max everything anyway, as quickly as possible. Choosing how to spend your gold and resources AFTER maxing the town is also not micro: its a single decision with no repercussions for not choosing or acting correctly.

And every single decision in Kingsmarch is the same: did I wait long enough for resources to do something? Yes? Okay lets do something. And now we wait. Spending gold in different places such as recombo, mapping, or boating aren't micro decisions.......it's akin to just deciding what map you want to run at that particular moment. The downside is the amount of TIME it takes to be able to make another decision. That's literally it....time, time, time.

Having to make smaller decisions in the grand scheme of things is the micro managing, which includes all the decisions to do or not do something. Loot is something one has to manage any league and as space is limited you transition from a keep or don't to a more stringent variant of is it worth the space. But that's just something one does every time, still micro just not included because its the case for everyone yet the criteria isn't the same for everyone (as we have varied additional storage).

I do wonder why you're so adamant about something you seemingly haven't experienced. The league was out for almost a year and I still got my challenges almost exclusively in a few weeks before that Phrecia event ended. But it does explain why you don't understand why its micro, just not why you would feel the need to argue it.

For example, my recruiting is waiting for the 100k upgrade - while on its own is relatively doable, I still have to come up with several hundred thousand more to cap everything as I still need several levels in runesmithing, recombinating and mapping as well. Depending on content you earn typically anywhere from less than 1k to 15kish gold and me averaging 5k to 7.5kish per map.

I'm well past the 500+ map bosses killed. The only two maps I haven't done once are vaults and doryani. She's stuck at 2 orbs as it takes ages to get the guardian maps needed to drop as well as needing both elder and shaper. But moot since she doesn't scale up well enough for maven anyway. But as far as the big picture goes, I've already done more than I accomplished in some of my previous leagues that actually went most of the 3 months, and she was originally intended only to level to 80. I went longer as settlers was the first "new" league I had done since archnem and it was making regular mapping "FEEL" more rewarding, at least at first.

Eventually as the gold costs kept getting higher that sense of reward only became dread as the earnings flattened out long before. She's currently at 12d 16 hours played, which is longer than a level 98 (by more than 2 hrs) that's been sitting in std since Delirium finished but still putting in time as a mule.

In other words, its not like I haven't put in time, but so much time that the novelty of settlers has worn its welcome. The motivation to finish the town is gone. With the last 2 leagues I 40/40'd, I wanted them to go longer. Between Phrecia and merging into settlers my interest faded in less than a month and a half.

I don't mind the concept of a player town, but the 11 tiers of increasing gold cost per upgrade, gold cost to gamble (keyword gamble) potential workers, hiring fees on top of hourly wages and having to constantly fund the treasury for work to be done -- too many gold\time sinks.